The Tech and the Groom
by Flying Dragonite
Summary: Waylon began humming a familiar tune... The Groom paused for a moment at the threshold to Waylon's workroom with a strange expression on his face. Then he disappeared... Soon enough, a voice joined in Waylon's humming, singing the lyrics of the song. "When I was a boy, my mother often said to me..."
1. The Tech and the Groom

**AN:** So, I've been in a real Outlast kick lately and I'm just obsessed with Eddie Gluskin. I found a really cool picture on deviantart that inspired me to write this. This is the the link to said picture: midorieyes . deviantart art/ Outlast-Whistleblower-The-Ex-Wife-469711793. Midori gets credit for the original idea. I'm thinking about maybe writing more in this 'verse of Outlast. I love the idea of Eddie x Waylon so... we'll see. Anyway. Without further ado, I give you:

 **The Tech and the Groom**

Screams. Yelling and screaming and begging for him to stop, using any number of bargains to plead for their life, but Waylon was deaf to them all. He carefully stroked the bare wires before jabbing them into place, seemingly not noticing the sudden spark of electricity that coursed through the body on the table before him. The screams stopped, and he was surrounded in blessed silence, broken only by the pleasant hum of electricity and the occasional ragged gasps from the man below him.

There was a glowing in Waylon's green eyes, that certainly hadn't been there before he'd been forcibly ... "admitted" to Mount Massive Asylum. Light bruises mottled his face, and where once his skin had been smooth on his forearms, there lay a roadmap of scars and scrapes from his journey to his current state. As Waylon swallowed reflexively, he could feel his adam's apple bob gratingly over the old wound on his neck.

The glow died slightly from his eyes as he thought back on how he'd gotten the wound. The sensation of the rope around his neck, the struggles and gasps; and that charming voice -that damned smooth-talking voice that despite Waylon's mental hatred for its owner, still sent shudders of -well, he wasn't sure what they were shudders OF, but it wasn't disgust or fear -down his spine.

"Darling!" For a moment, Waylon thought the voice was just in his memory, but as he was suddenly pushed aside by a screaming man in his haste to get away, Waylon realized it was no memory. He scowled as another man stepped into the light of his workroom. The man was tall, several feet taller than him, and broad shouldered. He wore a stitched vest, splattered in varying stages of dried blood.

A deranged smile lay on the man's face, which was mottled by a reddish-brown rash that was mostly centered around the left side of his face. Waylon noted that the rash seemed less red than the last time he'd seen the face -perhaps it was healing. The man was none other than the Groom, or Eddie Gluskin. When the Groom laid eyes on Waylon, the smile faltered for a moment before curling into a bitter smirk.

Waylon sniffed pointedly, wrinkling his nose at the other man, wondering what the Groom would do now. Waylon had escaped from the Groom before, several times. In fact, Waylon was the only victim of the Groom to have survived, at least that he knew of. They'd developed a sort of grudging respect for each other, neither able to finish off the other, and eventually simply keeping to their own territory, a mutual expectation of 'out of sight, out of mind' mentality. But they'd not met each other face to face in... well, Waylon wasn't sure HOW long, but it'd been a while.

"Ah, my old flame!" Eddie said eventually, stepping forward and laying a hand on Waylon's shoulder. Waylon stiffened and clenched his fists together, a wire still in one hand. He sidestepped and crossed his arms, jerking his head towards the direction the Groom's "bride" had run. "So good to see you again, Darling!" Eddie continued, before his eyes turned slightly cold. "Even if you were a filthy WHORE."

Waylon shook his head, a bitter chuckle escaping him. "Your bride is getting away," he said, once again jerking his head in the direction the man had ran.

"Still have the entrance to the third floor blocked off, Darling?" Eddie twirled his long knife in his right hand. It was more of a statement than a question, and Waylon grinned sharply, the glow returning to his eyes and danger in the fierce grin he now sported.

"What do you think? Can't have my programs running amok, can I?" Waylon returned.

Eddie mirrored his "old flame's" grin. "Then I don't have anything to worry about, do I?" He said, removing his left hand from Waylon's shoulder to pull out a rusty key from his pocket, before it disappeared once more. "Let me look at you, Darling; it's been too long."

Waylon rolled his eyes as Eddie's bloodshot ones traveled over his jumpsuited form. He was no longer bothered by any looks Eddie could give him -he had endured too much to be bothered by the sociopath's leering looks.

"Still as unseemly as ever, I see..." Eddie muttered after a moment.

Waylon snorted, but a flash of hurt tickled at the back of his head. He ignored that part of his brain -it was certainly a ridiculous reaction, surely brought on by the madness of this place. "The feeling is mutual, you rotten prick," he replied. He stepped away from Eddie completely, taking a look at his project, who was still moaning softly on the table. "Get going after your bride; I'm too busy for your shit today."

The Groom's smirk fell into a scowl, and he fingered his knife, but was interrupted by the sudden reappearance of his "bride." The man had stumbled back into the room, finally figuring out there was no escape on this floor, only to freeze in horror to find the Groom still here.

Eddie lunged after the man with his knife, and Waylon turned back to his project, ignoring the screams and begs and then the wet slicing as Eddie finished off another "whore."

Waylon began humming a familiar tune as Eddie dragged off the corpse of the man. The Groom paused for a moment at the threshold to Waylon's workroom with a strange expression on his face. Then he disappeared to the lower floor. Soon enough, a voice joined in Waylon's humming, singing the lyrics of the song.

"When I was a boy, my mother often said to me..."


	2. Speak Softly Into the Night

**AN: Wellp. Surprised by how quickly I wrote this second chapter, but here you go. I really couldn't help myself, I just love this pairing and I love Outlast so much. And Eddie is so gosh-darn hot, for a psycho with a rash on his face and blood everywhere. I mean, just saying. I'm rambling. Oh well. Anyway, this chapter explores Waylon's damaged psyche and goes into a little more depth on how he became 'the Tech'.**

 **~Speak Softly Into the Night~**

They had the monopoly on food. And electricity, but the more important was the food. After several failed attempts by several different troops of well-armed men to retake the Asylum, the government eventually barricaded the mountain off from any outside forces coming in, and set guards to kill any attempting to get out. Waylon figured that they were hoping the variants would just kill each other off. In any case, Eddie had been smart enough to stake out the place with the biggest food stores as his territory, and Waylon had claimed the upper levels of the building as his after he realized that he wasn't getting off the mountain alive.

Waylon had given up leaving the mountain, but he had not given up on life. He had returned to the Rec building and proceeded to face off with Dennis, the man with Dissociative Identity Disorder who had originally chased Waylon into the Groom's arms. Waylon had learned a thing or two in his time at Mount Massive, and this time he wasn't just trying to run away and escape -this was truly life or death. He had overpowered Dennis and presented him as a peace offering to the Groom, who'd managed to cut himself down from the entangled ropes Waylon had left him in.

If the rafters hadn't broken when they had, Waylon suspected that the Groom would have died that night, when Waylon had made his escape. He had gotten inches from impalation upon a metal bar as it was. After the peace offering, Eddie and Waylon fell into their 'out of sight, out of mind' mentality, and took turns using the kitchen, neither wanting to have anything to do with the other. Years worth of food lay in the storerooms, so that the Murkoff Corporation didn't have to rely on prying questions as to how many people they were feeding and what; same with the solar-powered generators giving the place electricity. Even if someone shut off the main power, the Rec building -which held the employee quarters- would still have electricity.

Waylon hadn't meant to start wiring up his little programs; he really hadn't. But the promise of food drew the surviving variants -the ones that could do more than just sit around waiting for death, anyway- to the building, even with the threat of the Groom below. Waylon had been attacked by a variant and before he knew it he had the man strapped to a table, wires entering into his bloodstream from cut-open veins and somehow, to Waylon's damaged psyche, they were beautiful. His beautiful machines that he'd once hacked into with ease, returned to him through the veins of his programs.

So the variants were drawn to the building of death from the promise of food, only to land on his or the Groom's table. Both meant certain death; though Waylon thought he was far kinder to his programs than the Groom was to his brides. After so long, electric shock simply shut down the body's nerves, causing the pain receptors to shut off. Eddie's method was far more painful and bloody. But Waylon supposed it didn't really matter; they still ended up dead, either way.

Waylon sighed, dragging a hand over his face. He hadn't meant to go this far; but he was in too deep. The few hours he spent under the effects of the morphogenic engine and then the horrors he'd faced directly after the exposure had deeply damaged something inside him. This was clear to him, but he couldn't stop himself. It just felt so... RIGHT. Stringing up the bodies, connecting sparking wires and fixing them up just right relieved a pressure that Waylon hadn't even realized was there until it had been relieved and now he couldn't stop. He knew, now, why Eddie pursued his hopeless dream because it was painful not to pretend, to just kill for the sake of killing and he had to give himself justification for making all those men into women and then stringing them up to hang.

Waylon understood Eddie. And he couldn't hate him. Not anymore. He disliked the Groom, disgusted at the looks the Groom would give him, but most of all, hated that he couldn't hate him. What Waylon hated, despised, was that he didn't hate Eddie as much as he should, especially after all the shit Eddie had put him through -the guy had almost cut off his dick, for Christ's sake! And he would have, if it hadn't been for that patient. That patient... Waylon had never seen him again, but no doubt he was strung up in the gym like the rest of the Groom's victims.

"...get married, son, and see how happy you will be...~" Waylon's head jerked up. Eddie was close, very close. What was he doing on Waylon's floor? Was he chasing another 'bride'? Waylon looked around, narrowing his eyes. His floor was well-lit, in stark contrast to Eddie's shadowed basement, in part due to Waylon's newfound nervousness of the dark.

Waylon prowled around the floor, fingering the loop of wire at his belt. If Eddie had lost his bride, Waylon would help him get the guy back -anything to stop hearing that thrice-damned song. He heard it so much that it got stuck in his head and he found himself humming it at times in spite of himself. He would always stop in disgust when he realized what he was doing, but that didn't stop it from happening.

But though Waylon carefully inspected his floor, there was no escaped bride to be found. Waylon's lips curled up and his nose flared in irritation. Eddie had been playing with him. He returned to his workroom to find Eddie standing at the threshold to the door leading to the lower floor, still singing that damn song.

Waylon bared his teeth. What did the fucker want? He had thought they'd had an arrangement -'out of sight, out of mind'! Why was Eddie suddenly breaking this?

"Darling~" Eddie purred upon spotting Waylon approaching.

Waylon scowled. "Don't call me that!" he snapped, his tone on the verge of snarling. It hurt, tore at the edges of his fragile psyche, to hear the Groom call HIM that. Especially when it was said in such a way that suggested Eddie had forgotten everything that had happened between them, as if Eddie had... forgiven him, and wanted him back. It hurt and Waylon wanted to snarl and scream and tear into someone because he HATED Eddie but he didn't hate him ENOUGH and he was just so God-damn LONELY.

Waylon's breathing was harsh and ragged now, and he glared at the Groom with unnaturally-glowing eyes, fingering the wire on his belt lovingly. Surely the hurt would stop if he strung up HIM -the cause of the pain?

But Eddie just laughed, and the sound was melodic and smooth and softened the fraying edges of Waylon's rage. Waylon turned away, his breathing still harsh, gripping the edges of his worktable sharply, enough to feel the rough grain of the wood underneath his fingers and feel the tiny motes of pain from wooden slivers poking their way into his palms. "What the hell do you want, Eddie?" he asked eventually, his voice rough.

There was no answer, and Waylon turned, only to find that the Groom was gone. It was almost as if he had never been there, and now Waylon was confused. Had he imagined the whole thing? With his damaged psyche, it was completely possible, but then... why? Why would he hallucinate about Eddie in a way that didn't paint the Groom as the monster that he was inside? Waylon sagged against his worktable, feeling suddenly exhausted. He made his way to the room he had set up for himself -it had once been an office, and Waylon had dragged a couch inside to form a makeshift bed, hating the cots meant for the patients. He laid down on the couch and attempted to sleep. After several hours of tossing and turning, his body finally shut down and he fell into a fitful slumber filled with dreams of being chased, and a soothing voice calling him "Darling."


	3. Till Death Do Us Apart

**AN: These are just pouring from my fingers like no tomorrow. *shakes fist at muse* She likes it too much. I suppose there is a reason I call her DARKphan, after all. In any case... Here's the third installment. Waylon has bad dreams and Eddie helps him out. Daww, so sweet, don't you think? ehehehhehee.**

 **~'Till Death Do Us Apart~**

Waylon clamped a hand over his mouth as he crouched inside a locker, listening to the grunts and chains from the big fucker outside his claustrophobic safe haven. Chris Walker, the patient was called -an ex-millitant gone psycho, who was fond of ripping off people's heads. And Waylon was his next target.

"Little pig!"

Waylon gasped as the locker door was ripped open and he screamed as the giant of a man grabbed him by the neck. Waylon began to yell and scream, begging for his life but knowing it was no use. He began to sob and scream, begging for someone to save him.

Then he was being shaken, and Waylon shot up, slamming his forehead into someone else's. He cried out in pain, and heard the grunt of the person he'd run into. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the light, and the shadow over him revealed itself to be none other than Eddie Gluskin.

Waylon scowled. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, lifting his arms to push the man's hands away from his shoulders.

"You were screaming," the Groom replied. "Begging for me to save you from something."

Waylon paled. "...what?" he asked, his voice going soft and raspy.

"You were screaming my name. Asking me to save you," Eddie repeated. He gave a soft, almost fond, grin. "Do you miss me, Darling?"

"Like hell I was!" Waylon snarled. He made to get up, but Eddie pushed him back down easily. The Groom was much bigger and stronger than Waylon was, even with the slightly more toned muscles Waylon had developed in the past weeks.

"Hush, Darling. You look exhausted," Eddie said, looking over Waylon's body. A hand with a black, fingerless glove, held Waylon's chin as Eddie looked over his face. Waylon wanted to jerk away, but his body wouldn't let him. Eddie was, unfortunately, right. He was exhausted. More exhausted than Waylon thought he should be. He could feel his eyes slipping closed, though he struggled to keep them open.

"There, sleep, Darling..." Eddie's voice seemed far away, and Waylon blinked his eyes again, his vision going foggy. Before he sunk into the welcoming darkness, he saw something glint in the light as Eddie brought his other hand into view -an empty syringe. A thrill of terror shot through Waylon, but it was too late, as the darkness rushed towards him and embraced him in its welcoming arms.

When Waylon awoke, it was to confusion. He was laying on his couch, the flickering fluorescent lighting above him pounding a headache into his skull. He rolled over, groaning. Then he remembered the events that had preceded his unconsciousness, and he shot up, his hand reaching down to check his genitals in a panic. To his immense relief, everything that was supposed to be there was, and there was nothing that wasn't supposed to be there. He sighed, sagging against the couch, while his heart struggled to calm itself to a normal rhythm after the scare he had given himself.

When he'd finally calmed himself down, Waylon paused to think. What the hell had happened last night? Why had Eddie given him that sleep serum if he hadn't been meaning to take Waylon as his bride again? Had Eddie even really been there, or had it all been a hallucination dreamt up by his psychosis?

Waylon took his head in his hands and groaned. What was wrong with him? First the killing, the programs; now this... he didn't know what to do anymore. He knew this place was getting to him, had gotten to him. It hurt so much, knowing, feeling, seeing himself go slowly insane and being unable to stop it.

Part of it was the loneliness, Waylon knew. He was no doctor or psychologist, but he HAD taken several years of psychology in college to fill electives, and he knew what isolation did to humans. Humans NEEDED contact with other humans; it was a base need that without being filled, reduced humans to mere animals with no reasoning. The men he mutilated didn't count as company or contact; what little was exchanged between them was psycho ramblings on his own part and screaming and begging on their part. No, he needed a rational -or what counted for rational in this place- constant companion that could ground him in reality.

Which really only left him with one option. As psychotic as Eddie was, Waylon did have to admit that the Groom was the most grounded patient he had run into in the entire asylum. He had his fantasies, yes, but he was no screaming psycho -well, if you didn't anger him- who flailed around and was easy to avoid. That was part of what made him so dangerous -he was calculating, charming, and manipulative to a point.

But Waylon knew how to play his game. And Waylon was ready to do just about anything to stay alive, and more importantly, stay sane. He might never reach home, but he just couldn't bear to leave this world just yet. Even a world as fucked up as this Asylum. Waylon wasn't ready to die. He wasn't sure he would ever be.


End file.
